On Aravindan Balakrishnan and the “Worker’s Institute” of “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought”
The “Worker’s Institute” of “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought” was a former revisionist “Communist” group, which took the revisionist road of “Deng Xiaoping Thought” and then…became an actual religious cult. How did that happen? Were the police 100% correct about the events within the group? Why does one of it’s members, Josephine Herivel continue to support it? All this will be talked about and we can find out how a group of self-declared “Communists” became revisionists and then become a cult.
THE EARLY DAYS OF BALAKRISHNAN AND THE “WORKER’S INSTITUTE”
Aravindan Balakrishnan, or Comrade Bala, who was born a Malayali (just like me…) on July 16th, 1940, in Kerala, who later moved with his family to Singapore, as his father was a soldier, who would be stationed there. Aravindan Balakrishan would be surrounded by the metaphysical and reactionary ideology of the reactionary fuedal order as he grew up, his own mother apparently believing that Balakrishnan possessed “occult powers”, and nicknamed him Black Tongue. This reactionary metaphysical ideology, which Balakrishnan would (wrongly) claim to have broken from, would certainly show up in his future actions in the “CP”E“(ML)” he’d split from and “WIMLMZT” he would lead to becoming a counter-revolutionary cult.
He would grow up during the Malayan Emergency, where the British state would use intense, violent and monsterous force to supress the Malayan National Liberation forces, as is typical of Imperialist wars on the oppressed nations of the world.
Balakrishnan witnessed these events first hand, and this left him with a lasting hatred of Britain, which is fair. In fact, he would insist that Britain was a fascist state for the rest of his life. This is wrong, while Britain has done monstrous (and yes even fascist) things to the people of the world, Britain was, and is, mainly a bourgeois democracy, with aspects of fascism in it. However, the bourgeois democratic aspect is principal and the fascist aspect is secondary. If you want an actual definition of fascism, then look to the A Short Introduction to the MLM Conception of Fascism.
Balakrishnan would be educated in the elite Raffles Institute secondary school and then enter the University of Singapore. He would be a quiet student, but he would begin to read the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and others, though he would take an incorrect interpretation of these, as shown by the rest of this article.
Balakrishnan would then move to Britain, fearing persecution for identifying himself as a “Communist”. He would join the “Communist Party” of England “(Marxist-Leninist)” (future “Revolutionary Communist” Party of Britain “(Marxist-Leninist)”), being an organiser and passionate speaker, rallying the students of the London School of Economics where he was studying, giving lectures and leading sit-ins in support of various causes. Through these events, he would build a substantial following, and so would (his distorted view of) Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
Within the “CP”E“(ML)”/“RCP”B“(ML)” (see the section on the CPE(ML)/RCPB(ML) in Part 2 of the British Anti-Revisionist ML history series), one can find the negative tendencies that would manifest within the “WIML(MZT)”. Metaphysical thinking (“If Hardial Bains says X, it must be true” becomes “If China and/or Bala says X, it must be true”), ultra“left” posturing (this to somehow attempting to build “stable revolutionary base area” in Brixton, during a period of no People’s War and without any support from the masses) that become rightism (“supporting Hoxha’s rightist attacks on Mao” becomes the supposed “International Dictatorship of Proletariat” of Hua Guofeng’s revisionist China, which we will talk about later).
“CP”E“(ML)”/“WIMLMZT” Split
Aravindan Balakrishnan would deny the need for a revolutionary Party to build a revolution in Britain, as he believed (WRONGLY) that the Communist Party of China was beginning to develop an “International Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, while the Central Committee of the “CP”E“(ML)” wasn’t stupid/insane. The “CP”E“(ML)”/“RCP”B“(ML)” was (due to their loyalty to Haridal Bains and the “CP”C“(ML)” also beginning to fall under the influence of Enver Hoxha, while Balakrishnan would have a slavish loyalty to China, no matter the direction China was going to go, whether revolutionary or revisionist.
Balakrishnan would hold the metaphysical belief that if China said, did or supported X, then revolutionaries should as well, even if they were wrong, as China was socialist/“socialist”. This would lead to him him getting increasingly angry at the “CP”E“(ML)” for following Hoxha. On a more personal level, Balakrishnan would also resent the lack of power he had internally within the organisation, especially considering that he was a leading member and had recruited many into the group. Balakrishnan may have felt slighted that he, despite helping build the party, especially amongst Malaysian and Singaporean student communities, lacked power within it.
This is important to study, as often in Communist parties, figures (especially from more privileged class backgrounds (petty-bourgeoise, class traitors of the exploiting classes, (in semi-feudal countries) national bourgeoise, etc.)) who are very good operationally/organisationally will begin to feel slighted because of petty-bourgeoise desires (even subconsciously) of recognition, fame and complete power over organisations. While the “CP”E“(ML)” was unable to do this on account of being a Bainsite revisionist party, the new Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Proletarian Vanguard Party of the future should struggle against these tendencies to (if possible) “cure the sickness to save the patient”, as Chairman Mao so brilliantly put it in “Rectify the Party’s Style of Work”.
This went from a feeling of petty-bourgeoise disgruntlement to opportunism, with Balakrishnan forming an Opportunist faction within the “CP”E“(ML)” which proclaimed the revisionist party as fascist while remaining within the Party, and tried to struggle to transform the entire Party into what the “WI” would become. The Bainsite line would win out against the Balakrishnanite line and drive out around 10% of the Party membership who aligned with Balakrishnan.
Balakrishnan going it alone
Balakrishnan had been expelled along with his followers and others who would not follow the line of the “CP”E“(ML)”. This initially unified group would gather around Aravindan Balakrishnan and his “WI”.
One revisionist tendency that would be exacerbated within the Worker’s Institute was there strange pseudo-Trotskyist attitude to the Communist Party of China. They considered themselves not as a pre-Party formation or Party but a wing of the Communist Party of China, waiting for a Chinese liberation of the world through a by the People’s Liberation Army (Dengist Permanent Revolution?) in a global People’s War. This is obviously insane. People’s China under Mao may have aided a British revolution it that somehow happened, but Britain’s revolution would not be brought about by an “International Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, “Chinese liberation of the world” or whatever else. It is up to the proletarian revolutionaries of their own countries, with the support of their Comrades internationally, thought not imposed with no regarding to the material conditions of the countries. I don’t know why I’m arguing against this position, it’s so absurd.
The Balakrishan group would initially compose about 10% of the “CP”E“(ML)”, and would act as one of the most militant factions within the New Communist movement in Britain. Initially, they would take progressive and good actions, such as fighting against Deportations and calling to support Socialist China during the twilight years of Socialist China. The ideological ideas that would emerge in an intensified form during the transformation from a revisionist grouping to a religious cult had existed, in the form of ultra-“left” (left in form but right in essence). The ‘Worker’s Institute’ would put it’s members in danger of deportation (many of the members who followed Balakrishnan were immigrants and exiles and their participation in these protests would be a threat to their residency in the UK), and the grouping would become a more secretive and sectarian.
The group would eventually whittle down to under 20 members, Balakrishnan, his Tanzanian-Gujarati wife Chandra Pattni, who he had met at the London School of Economics, and some other women. They would be forced to vacate their inital “Mao Zedong Memorial Centre” in Brixton after a police raid, and would be forced to go to Lambeth to rebuild and “prepare” for their “Chinese invasion” that would never come. This is where the transformation from a revisionist but legitimate political group to an actual religious cult would begin.
REVISIONISTS TO A RELIGIOUS CULT
Things got worse.
The group transformed from a revisionist group, but a real political group, to a revisionist cult. As the 60s/70s wave of revolution hit the shore more softly, sputtering out and dying, the “WI” under “Comrade” Bala would begin to reject the world, instead isolating themselves within their Centre. While around half of their members would continue going to work in order to provide funds to the cult, the group would stop all attempts to organise amongst the people, and instead try to become “model revolutionaries”.
Balakrishan would also claim that the British government had tried to assassinate him with a raygun. While a governmental assasination attempt against Aravindan Balakrishnan is not impossible, the fact that he claimed that they tried to do this with a “raygun” (the claim is made in this document written as a defence of Bala) instead of via a far more common and believable normal gun shows that there is at least some truth in the claims that Balakrishnan was telling his sect metaphysical lies in order to make them more obedient to him.
Around this time, Balakrishnan would also use his high position in the group of women to exploit them both in terms of via their labour and through sexual methods.
In terms of labour, about half their members went to work, from where they contributed their funds into the upkeep of the house and for the survival of the members, which on paper seems fine, even good (if you live in a house in capitalism, you should, if you can, try to keep the house). However, much of this was also taken to be used by Bala for personal reasons. The other half would stay as full time as supposed “professional revolutionaries”, however, their lives seemed more like slavery than revolutionary lives. They would look after Bala, Chandra, and to a lesser extent Chandra’s sister.
Eventually, the other members who went to work would either leave or end work, and the group would subsist off the benefits given to Chandra’s sister, who was disabled. The members of the group by that point would be full isolated from the rest of the world.
He would also create another false form of social control, the supposed JACKIE sattelite which had the power to control the world. JACKIE standed for JESUS-ALLAH-CHRIST-KRISHNA-IMMORTAL EASWARAN (Eknath Easwaran, a famous Malayali Hindu religious scholar). Even in the name, the metaphysical thinking that led the way for a counter-revolutionary “world-rejecting” cult is shown, with the use of several reactionary religious figures to enshrine Bala as God within the group. But what was JACKIE? JACKIE was a supposed satellite created by the CPC in order to control the world via the covert International Dictatorship of the Proleteriat, but was in truth just a weapon of counter-revolutionary fear mongerring within the group in order to prevent any criticsm. The bourgeoise media, while presenting this group as ‘Maoist’ and not the Dengists that they really are, seem to focus a lot on JACKIE, despite the fact that JACKIE was used as a way to stifle criticism of the leadership of the group, something that was enshrined as a key principle of Communist organising and leadership by Maoism.
In terms of sexual exploitation, Bala would commit a string of r apes on his followers. One of these rapes would be done upon a certain Sian Davies, and this would lead to the birth of a certain Prem Mapinduzi (“Prem” is love Hindi, “Mapinduzi” is revolution in Swahili, literally “Love Revolution”), or as she refers to herself now, Katy Morgan-Davies.
“PROJECT PREM”, KATY MORGAN-DAVIES
Katy Morgan-Davies was born into the group. She was to be a guerrilla fighter for the PLA, and perhaps a future leader, she was supposed to (according to Katy) to first (somehow) take over Brazil, and from their, the whole world, for the Chinese “Communist” Party. Now of course, this was just a bunch of lies told to her to control her, I doubt the CPC even knew of her existence, but it is a testament to the use of metaphysical thinking to control victims of counter-revolutionary sects.
She was told that she was a foundling, though it has since been proved that she was the daughter of Balakrishnan and Sian Davies. Through the years she was in the sect, she would be denied care and love by the members of the group (Bala told them that female nurses holding babies lead to lesbianism). According to her, the worst member wold be Sian Davies, her mother, who would die after falling out of a window. The members would not give her medical treatment. Another, a Malaysian nurse named Oh Kar Eng, would die similarly.
Katy would try to rebel against Bala and run away in her teens (her attempt to escape would shatter her faith in Bala and his reactionary ideology, as Bala said if she went outside into society she would set on fire. and that didn’t happen), and would contact the police, who in a totally expected outcome, would just send her home.
Eventually, she would begin an attempt to escape. At this time, Josephine “Josie” Herivel would face a personal tragedy, and Katy would grow closer to her. This would lead to Herivel noticing Katy had a lost a lot of weight, and would lead to her helping her to leave to get medical attention (she had undiagnosed diabetes), sending her to see a charity to see who could help them in this.
From their, the charity would inform the police, who would raid the house, free Aisha Wahab, another member, and arrest Bala and Chandra, though Chandra would be released later as they could not get a charge on her (not that she was innocent, mind you, she was just less criminally responsible for the actions of Bala on account of her lesser status than Bala, and there was less direct evidence linking her to crimes, typical of the bourgeoise state). Once the police would get involved, Josie Herivel would begin to get doubts about this whole thing.
They would be moved to Leeds, Bala would be sent to prison after his abuses were uncovered, and the state would use this incident, which was caused by metaphysical thinking and Dengist revisionism, merged with counter-revolutionary male chauvinism on the part of Bala, as propaganda against Maoism, which in truth, when correctly applied, is the antidote against Bala and his crimes.
KMG is now a member of Labour and in a number of strange relationships which will be talked about later. Aisha is still in Leeds, still friendly with Katy, abandoned Dengism and returned to her birth religion of Islam, and is now just a normal woman who goes to the Dentist more than normal (Bala forbade her from going to the Dentist as he claimed that teeth fell out and regrew at 100) and volunteers at a charity shop. She claims (and I believe her as I do not see any reason she would lie about this) to have not been aware of sexual abuse, even if she was aware of physical abuse, which happened in the sect. Like many of the members of the group and those in the surrounding areas in Lambeth and Brixton, she now associates ‘Maoism’ and ‘Communism’ with the revisionist Dengist cult. The other two members, Josephine Herivel and Balakrishnan’s wife Chandra Pattni are the focuses of the next section.
A QUICK WORD OF HERIVEL AND CHANDRA TODAY, THE “WORKER’S INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCED STUDY OF NATURE”
The “WI” is often reported as dissolved with the raid and the arrest of Bala. This is untrue. Chandra and Herivel have continued the organisation as the “Worker’s Institute for the Adavanced Study of Nature”. The organisation produces defences of Bala to this very day. Most of this is garbage that does not need to be analysed, but there are some interesting things from the story that have should be mentioned.
The “Worker’s Institute” reported that Katy Morgan-Davies had entered into romantic relationships with a paedophile (Nigel Oldfield) and a guy who punched his child’s teacher (Marius Fenneck).
On Marius Feneck: while Feneck did do that, and there seems to have been a crush on Fenneck by Katy/Rosie (before she adopted the name Katy she used Rosie), it does not seem like there was ever an actual relationship. On Nigel Oldfield: Nigel Oldfield was a paedophile have been a paedophile and had even been threatened by a mob of angry Rotherbirds after being found out as one, and seems to be have been in some sort of a relationship with Katy.
What does this prove? Katy has horrible tast in men and hangs around bad people. It does not disprove anything that has happened to her.
Katy also wrote (for lack of a better word) ‘edgy’ poems when she began to rebel against Bala and his cult. One of these poems was one about Nelson Mandela.
Katy wrote this in 1997. She would have been 14 or 15 at this period of time, and beginning to rebel against Bala. Bala’s favoured political issues were the ones he was most familiar with that, being Malayan politics, British politics, and the politics of progressive circles in the 80s. At that time, the anti-apartheid struggle was a key arena of the struggle, and so Bala would have been supportive of Mandela and the ANC, as most (correctly) were. In fact, considering what Bala had said before, I would not be suprised if he had claimed that Mandela was an ally, part of the Bala-Chinese “International Dictatorship of the Proleteriat”. Therefore Katy, in an embryonic and misguided act of rebellion, simply attacked what she thought (since Bala was bad) must have also been bad. This is not the “smoking gun” the group seems to believe it is.
The supposed “Worker’s Institute for the Advanced Study of Nature” is a revisionist project, made from the ruins of a cult that has been defeated ideologically and politically, which represents a revisionist tendency. It has been superceeded dialectically, and in truth is of no further need to be analysed, other than psychollogically in the case of the make up of it’s (two) members.
CONCLUSION
Aravindan Balakrishnan is dead now, his group is shattered and unable to hurt anyone. Few remember him other than as a case study in false imprisonment. What can we learn from the experiences that lead to him transforming his revisionist sect into a religious cult?
Metaphysical thinking, idealism and reactionary ideology, as well as male chauvanism (something that is a recurring theme in these horrid revisionist sects), must be firmly targetted through criticism-self criticism and ideological struggle. Comrades must be ready to be humble and not exagerate importance, Comrades must avoid the formation of small sects, Comrades must critique all things. Comrades must also not do child abuse, or abuse of any kinds (as obvious as that sounds, this incident has proven that it is not so obvious). Leadership must not exempt itself from criticism and must not misuse it’s authority. Rejecting the masses in favour of metaphysical concepts and “saviours from above” (or in this case from the East, China) who cannot be criticized WILL lead to abuse and revisionism.
These are the lessons we can learn from the history of this revisionist sect.
